|
These considerations, amounting to the settlement of the
question, are not countered by the phenomenon of sympathy; the
response between soul and soul is due to the mere fact that all
spring from that self-same soul [the next to Divine Mind] from
which springs the Soul of the All.
We have already stated that the one soul is also multiple; and we
have dealt with the different forms of relationship between part
and whole: we have investigated the different degrees existing
within soul; we may now add, briefly, that differences might be
induced, also, by the bodies with which the soul has to do, and,
even more, by the character and mental operations carried over
from the conduct of the previous lives. "The life-choice made by
a soul has a correspondence"- we read- "with its former lives."
As regards the nature of soul in general, the differences have
been defined in the passage in which we mentioned the secondary
and tertiary orders and laid down that, while all souls are
all-comprehensive, each ranks according to its operative phase-
one becoming Uniate in the achieved fact, another in knowledge,
another in desire, according to the distinct orientation by which
each is, or tends to become, what it looks upon. The very
fulfillment and perfectionment attainable by souls cannot but be
different.
But, if in the total the organization in which they have their
being is compact of variety- as it must be since every
Reason-Principle is a unity of multiplicity and variety, and may
be thought of as a psychic animated organism having many shapes
at its command- if this is so and all constitutes a system in
which being is not cut adrift from being, if there is nothing
chance- borne among beings as there is none even in bodily
organisms, then it follows that Number must enter into the
scheme; for, once again, Being must be stable; the members of the
Intellectual must possess identity, each numerically one; this is
the condition of individuality. Where, as in bodily masses, the
Idea is not essentially native, and the individuality is
therefore in flux, existence under ideal form can rise only out
of imitation of the Authentic Existences; these last, on the
contrary, not rising out of any such conjunction [as the duality
of Idea and dead Matter] have their being in that which is
numerically one, that which was from the beginning, and neither
becomes what it has not been nor can cease to be what it is.
Even supposing Real-Beings [such as soul] to be produced by some
other principle, they are certainly not made from Matter; or, if
they were, the creating principle must infuse into them, from
within itself, something of the nature of Real-Being; but, at
this, it would itself suffer change, as it created more or less.
And, after all, why should it thus produce at any given moment
rather than remain for ever stationary?
Moreover the produced total, variable from more to less, could
not be an eternal: yet the soul, it stands agreed, is eternal.
But what becomes of the soul's infinity if it is thus fixed?
The infinity is a matter of power: there is question, not of the
soul's being divisible into an infinite number of parts, but of
an infinite possible effectiveness: it is infinity in the sense
in which the Supreme God, also, is free of all bound.
This means that it is no external limit that defines the
individual being or the extension of souls any more than of God;
on the contrary each in right of its own power is all that it
chooses to be: and we are not to think of it as going forth from
itself [losing its unity by any partition]: the fact is simply
that the element within it, which is apt to entrance into body,
has the power of immediate projection any whither: the soul is
certainly not wrenched asunder by its presence at once in foot
and in finger. Its presence in the All is similarly unbroken;
over its entire range it exists in every several part of
everything having even vegetal life, even in a part cut off from
the main; in any possible segment it is as it is at its source.
For the body of the All is a unit, and soul is everywhere present
to it as to one thing.
When some animal rots and a multitude of others spring from it,
the Life-Principle now present is not the particular soul that
was in the larger body; that body has ceased to be receptive of
soul, or there would have been no death; what happens is that
whatsoever in the product of the decay is apt material for animal
existence of one kind or another becomes ensouled by the fact
that soul is nowhere lacking, though a recipient of soul may be.
This new ensouling does not mean, however, an increase in the
number of souls: all depend from the one or, rather, all remains
one: it is as with ourselves; some elements are shed, others grow
in their place; the soul abandons the discarded and flows into
the newcoming as long as the one soul of the man holds its
ground; in the All the one soul holds its ground for ever; its
distinct contents now retain soul and now reject it, but the
total of spiritual beings is unaffected.
|
|